Freedom Intensifies
by GIRL IN STORY
Summary: The Winter Soldier was given aversion therapy as conditioning against Captain America. Bucky Barnes gives himself exposure therapy by starting an Etsy store that sells Captain America T-shirts.


Rated for swearing, Tumblr, mentions of cannibalism, puns, period typical homophobia (both then and now), and Thor being Done.

Post CA:TWS, deviating from later canon. Could be read as gen or pre-slash. Standard disclaimers apply.

* * *

Riefenstahl-Beaters was an Etsy store specializing in Captain America T-shirts.

The store had become Tumblr famous after being featured on a blog called Regretsy: The Worst of Etsy. It had gone on to achieve general internet fame by spawning twelve memes and twice as many copyright infringement lawsuits. Riefenstahl-Beaters sold several T-shirts screenprinted with its own Cease and Desist letters.

It was brought to Steve's attention during an Avengers team meeting because: of course.

The Captain America trademark, which was about as violated as Steve felt, had been passed from to Tony from Howard, who filed for intellectual rights to the name, shield, and theme song in 1944. Technically, Steve was violating his own trademark.

Tony had to be reminded that he owned the Captain America trademark, but he already considered himself owner of the Avengers, the same way he owned the Giants, except that instead of wearing a giant foam finger (not the traditional one) to a couple of games per season, he wore a metal suit to all the games.

Steve figured it was the only way Tony's ego could allow someone else to be the captain, so he allowed Tony to be owner, and completely failed to see the irony.

Pepper found Riefenstahl-Beaters on Tumblr. She was the unapologetic moderator of a Tumblog dedicated to the Avengers taking up too much space on the train.

Steve was the worst offender, but it wasn't really his fault. Bruce and Tony were spared entirely because they never took the subway. Natasha was spared because she was never _seen_ on the subway (not the same thing).

By the time Pepper finished her PowerPoint, Tony had pulled up his Starkphone and Steve knew he was ordering out the inventory.

The inventory, which included:

 _An Uncle Sam poster featuring Captain America and the words, "I want YOU... to watch your language."_

" _I identify with Steve Rogers because I too could sleep for 70 years and wake up fighting."_

 _A cartoon Captain America dressed in Batman's costume. His speech bubble said, "YES GUNS!" He was flexing._

" _Captain America did the Ice Bucket challenge before it was cool." ("So many puns," whispered Sam.)_

 _Captain Americat: The Furriest Avenger_

 _*FREEDOM INTENSIFIES*_

 _A picture of Steve Rogers and the words, "I was hiding under your porch because I love you." (Which Steve did not get. He'd seen_ Up _. He just didn't get it.)_

 _Several shirts with a note in the listing indicating that the profits went to the American Breast Cancer Foundation. They all featured photorealistic drawings of Steve's tac suit, down to the lovingly rendered pecs. One had the light blue and pink ribbons for male breast cancer and the words, "Unlike Nazis, breast cancer does not discriminate." It was a top seller, but not as popular as the one that just said, "Save the Boobies."_

 _And one shirt with the word "Helvetica" in Comic Sans._

"I don't get the name," said Sam. "I mean, I get the name, but I don't get why they didn't call it Captain American Apparel."

Pepper shrugged. She could make even shrugging look professional. "More trademark infringement lawsuits."

"That doesn't seem to bother them. Have you-"

"No, they're all coming from Susan G. Komen, DC Comics, and Disney," said Pepper. "I wanted to wait and see what Steve had to say."

"I punched Leni Riefenstahl," was what Steve had to say.

The Avengers just blinked at him, like those creepy owl-shaped scarecrows Tony had put up around the tower so birds would stop shitting on the roof. It had the added bonus of preventing Clint from jumping through windows in what Steve generously assumed was a misguided attempt to alert them of any undiagnosed heart conditions.

"You punched Leni Riefenstahl," Bruce repeated.

"It was _one_ time."

It was one time that had never made the official records. The United States government had been happy to have Captain America punch Hitler over two hundred times, but they hadn't approved of him punching a Hitler-sympathizing filmmaker, because she also happened to be a woman. Steve agreed to keep his mouth shut, because didn't think Sarah Rogers would have approved either.

If only Riefenstahl had been able to keep her mouth shut, he wouldn't have socked her in the first place.

That was the reason Steve let Tony track down the owner of Riefenstahl-Beaters: He wanted to know who knew his secret.

He also wanted to know who was behind that Comic Sans shirt, which he found _incredibly_ irritating for some reason.

The owner was listed as a Sebastian Stan, which was clearly a fake name. He paid his bill with digitally laundered cryptocurrency, so there was no credit card associated with his account. His address was a PO box. The phone number was a burner. The email address was Torbox, a darkweb secure provider, with added encryption. Tony was still able to track him down, but it took a whole fifteen minutes. Steve spent those fifteen minutes humming the Jeopardy theme song. Tony said he regretted ever teaching him how to use the internet.

Steve spent the quinjet right to Portland, Oregon continuing to hum the Jeopardy theme song, because he got it stuck in his own head, and wondering about Sebastian Stan.

Only Phillips and the Howlies knew about Riefenstahl. Steve thought he had met all the Howlettes, as Dernier's granddaughter called them, pronouncing it like "Owlet." Although it had been a large reunion and he had spent most of it having a mild panic attack.

Steve tended to ignore his panic attacks. They weren't that different from asthma attacks, and he had plenty of experience ignoring those. When it got real bad, he used the breathing techniques he'd learned from B—

If Sebastian Stan wasn't a Howlette, maybe he was psychic. It was possible. It was the future. There were aliens, and automatic toilets.

Really, Steve just wanted to meet someone who knew him that well, even if it was a stranger. Everyone in the future seemed to think of him as some big hero, when really, he was a little shit. He loved every single one of those shirts. Even the _Up_ one, which fine, he did get.

Not the Comic Sans one though. That one was just irritating.

They touched down at PDX, leaving the quinjet in longterm parking, and took the Max Red Line to the city center, with a detour for Tony to get some Blue Star doughnuts. "Voodoo is so two episodes of Portlandia ago," he said, through a mouthful of Hard Apple Cider Fritter. It made about as much sense as anything Tony said, which was none.

Sebastian Stan's IP address was dynamic but Tony had been able to trace it to an apartment on 12th and Columbia, just east of the Portland Art Museum. The buzzer for apartment 201 had a picture of the crab from _The Little Mermaid_ next to the button.

That was another thing. The guy's drawing style was familiar, and a little old-fashioned, like he was stealing one of the master's styles to draw cartoon superheroes. Steve couldn't place it, even though he could tell an Ingres from a David in the dark. Okay, well, maybe not in the _dark_ , but…

As a kid, Steve had taken advantage of the Met's pay-what-you-can policy, spending whole days wandering the cavernous halls with B—

Tony hit the buzzer. The front door unlocked before he could say, "Doughnut delivery. Yes, that's a thing."

He said it anyway.

The Avengers exchanged a look with varying levels of "what the fuck," and went up the narrow stairs, single file. Steve went first.

The door of apartment 201 was unlocked.

The claymore was set up to trigger a cooking pot packed with C4 after a delay of several seconds, and the blast was directed inwards. Whoever set the trap didn't want to damage any of the other apartments, but wasn't planning on sticking around after it had been set off.

Steve made like a turtle.

When the room stopped exploding, Steve poked his head out from under the shield. "Report?"

"We are all unharmed, Captain Steve," Thor whispered from the hallway, but Thor's whisper was a normal person's holler.

Steve had been asking the Avengers to stop calling him Captain America, with mixed results.

"How about you, Rocket Pop?" asked Tony.

He sighed, "I'm—"

"Steve?" said Bucky.

When he came back from his mild case of complete dissociative blackout, Bucky was holding Steve's gloved hand to his chest. His chest, which was covered in a picture Steve wearing a rainbow tac suit with the words, "The A isn't for Ally!"

"Breathe with me, Stevie, like when you had asthma. Come on."

Tony pointed at Bucky's shirt, "I think that's a virgin joke."

Even Tony sounded a little stunned, and that usually only happened when he blew himself up.

"Invisible minorities are not a joke, Stark," said Bucky.

Steve tried to catch his breath to say something, anything, but Bucky holding his hand was actually doing the opposite of helping.

Not that he was going to _let go_.

The smoke was also probably not helping, now that he thought about it.

"Calm your tits, Steve," said Bucky, and all Steve could see was that photorealistic tac suit, with the lovingly rendered pecs.

All he could hear was Tony's laughter.

Bucky let go of Steve's hand, and Steve finally caught his breath. He opened his mouth, but what came out was not, "Are you okay? Of course you're not okay. What do you need? I'll give you anything. I missed you. I love you. Do you remember me?"

It was, "What's with the Comic Sans shirt?"

Bucky gave him some serious side-eye. "I knew it would irritate you."

"Of course it irritates me. I'm a _graphic designer_."

"Not since the 40s, pal. We didn't even have Comic Sans in the 40s."

Steve's hadn't been anyone's pal since the 40s either. His heart swelled like the Grinch's. He wanted nothing more than to hug the stuffing out of his own personal, side-eying, trademark infringing, PTSD-riddled Cindy Lou Who, but instead he used every last newton of superstrength to not do that.

"We had _taste_ ," he said.

He and Bucky had always been able to communicate without words. A billion frat parties worth of ice and drugs between them hadn't changed that, and Bucky was communicating a flashing neon stop sign.

"Is this an elaborate Hydra plan to lure Steve in with amusing T-shirts?" asked Tony. "Because that always works with tacos. There's this one— the taco looks sad, and it says, 'Every now and then I fall apart.'"

Bucky glared at him. "That's fucking hilarious."

"Exactly," said Tony. "And now you want tacos."

Bucky scowled like he thought Tony was trying to brainwash him, which would have been funny if it wasn't so _not_.

"I ain't Hydra," said Bucky.

"See, that sounds like something Hydra would say," said Tony, jabbing a finger in the air (not the traditional one). There may have been some lingering resentment over the whole dead parents thing, but Tony had seen the Hydra files, and it was hard to stay mad at someone for whom you were empathy puking.

Bucky frowned at the floor, which was still smoldering slightly.

"I just ain't," he told the floor.

Even Tony didn't have anything to say to that.

"Where have you been?" Steve finally managed.

Bucky indicated the apartment, with a one-shouldered shrug, and it wasn't until then that Steve realized the arm was gone.

Steve wiped some soot out of his eyes and looked at the apartment instead. It was probably nice before they blew it up. It was a studio, the bed a futon on the floor, and every surface covered with Fruit of the Loom T-shirts. It wasn't nice by Tony's standards, or even traditional ones, but Bucky's standards were probably pretty low these days.

Steve wiped some more soot out of his eyes.

" _Why_?"

"Conditioning." Bucky was still talking to the floor.

All Steve could think of was the kind of conditioning that Natasha had taught him about, made with oil from food Steve hadn't even known produced oil. He didn't even know what argan oil _was._ Natasha said it was used for dipping bread, but to Steve, it just sounded cannibalistic.

Steve knew that wasn't the kind of conditioning Bucky was talking about, even though his hair looked very _nice_.

At least, he thought he knew that until Natasha started nodding.

"That makes sense."

"What makes sense?" asked Steve, because things had stopped making sense to him in 1944.

"Standard conditioning of an asset includes burning former alliances through gaslighting and other forms of psychological manipulation. The conditioning of the Winter Soldiers was not standard."

"Negative reinforcement," Bucky told the floor. "Aversion therapy. Aggressive electroshock treatment."

He sounded like he was reciting from that eidetic memory the serum had given them both, mostly because the things he was saying were euphemisms for electricity, and torture, and more electricity.

Steve winced. "So you didn't come home because…"

"It made me sick to think of you."

Steve would have winced again, but he was still wincing. It was kind of like stopping halfway through a crunch. His gut ached and he was pretty sure it was bad for his back.

"You were always the first thing I remembered," said Bucky, "and it was kind of hard to avoid reminders when they included the colors red, white, and blue, stars, stripes, blondes, big people, small people, sick people, and trash cans."

"Hey."

"Just the lids."

"Oh."

"I've been trying." Bucky gave that one-shouldered shrug again.

"The store?"

"Exposure therapy."

Steve winced again, picturing Bucky in his little apartment, drawing pictures of Steve with the occasional break to puke his guts up.

"Is it better?"

"Mostly," said Bucky.

"Can you— My floor has a guest room. Tony probably has guest floors. He may have a guest tower." Steve was rambling. That had never been a problem for him before. It hadn't been necessary. The only person he wanted to talk to could read him like a battlefield. Also, he couldn't catch his breath long enough to ramble. Then there had been the whole in-the-middle-of-Nazi-Germany thing. These days it was mostly because he couldn't get a word in edgewise around Tony.

"We have lots of room, and food, and argan oil. The conditioner kind, not the food kind, but we could probably get the food kind too."

Steve looked at Tony, but the Tony's eyebrows had shot up, like little hairy junkies.

"That sounds cannibalistic," said Bucky.

"I know, right?"

"Hydra had cannibals," said Bucky, and Steve felt his eyebrows join the party. "It was Russia. We got snowed in a lot, and I regrew whatever they cut off."

"Aw, man, naw," said Sam.

"Sorry." Bucky blushed, like he was embarrassed about having been _eaten_. "That happens sometimes."

Sam looked sympathetic. That was default for him. Some people (Tony) had Resting Bitch Face. Sam had resting Best Friend Face.

"Flashbacks?"

"Social awkwardness."

"If we're doing that, then I have a question," said Tony, actually raising a metal hand. "Are you gay for Steve?"

"For the sake of the fucks," said Thor, surprising Steve. Even Thor was Done, and Thor was never Done. Thor was immortal.

"Hey, I know DADT wasn't a thing yet, but I figure the principle-"

Steve laughed. It was the least pleasant sound he had ever heard himself make, including that squeak he made one time Clint jumped through the window at him.

"It wasn't Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Tony. It was Don't Ask, Don't Even Fucking Think About It, Because You're in Nazi Fucking Germany, Where People Go to the Gas Chamber for Being Gay. Brooklyn wasn't any better. It was just less organized. You want pride? We were proud of staying alive."

"Well, that answered my second question," said Tony. "Third question."

Thor hefted Mjölner menacingly. Tony put up the faceplate, but he didn't stop talking.

"Where'd you get the seed money for the store?"

Bucky blinked. "I sold the arm on eBay?"

Tony lowered the faceplate. His eyebrows started another party. "What? No? I had a watch alert for prosthetic arms."

Steve eyebrows joined in again. They were much more social than he was. Traitors.

Another half-shrug. "I painted it orange and sold it as Overwatch cosplay."

"Well, that's…" Tony started, "a thing you just said. How do you type? Don't you know you're supposed to use Home Row?"

This coming from a man who used voice recognition to order pizza.

"Please," said Bucky. "Typing is so two arms ago."

"I like him." Tony handed Steve a Hard Apple Fritter. "He's full of spunk."

"Even I don't think that means what it used to mean." Bucky took the doughnut, but he sniffed it, like he was checking for poison. "Blue Star?"

"Yeah."

"Nice." He took a bite.

"Can you come home?" asked Steve, ready to spiral like a white girl's zucchini if the answer was anything other than, "Fuck, yes."

"Fuck, yes."

Steve gave Bucky his Dug eyes. "Really?"

"Well, you haven't made me puke yet."

"I bet you say that to all the guys."

Bucky smiled a smile that Steve hadn't seen since 1944, and he stopped pretending it was soot in his eye.


End file.
